Tag Archives: Psychology

Quite a while ago (8 or so years), I had the opportunity to watch Waking Life. At the time, the movie didn’t have nearly the impact on me as it probably would today. But, one discovery stood out above all the rest- something that probably didn’t touch much of anyone else and when the rest of the class (it was a High school class viewing) went back and had the discussion on the movie, nobody really felt this little tidbit was anywhere near significant. But for me, this realization and subsequent connection with quite possibly the rest of the world and what it might lead to in terms of lucid dreaming was almost mind blowing.

Since its been so long, I can only shoddily paraphrase what is said in the movie. Essentially, I believe it is Keanu Reeves (EDIT: I was thinking of another movie with the same animation style produced several years post involving Mr. Reeve’s, called A Scanner Darkly, which I have not seen) Wiley Wiggins (of Dazed and Confused fame? No way. Moving on…) the main character very briefly touches on his realization that, in dreams, you can never turn on the lights. What?!? No way. But true. If you think back to all of the dreams you’ve ever had and if the lighting is too low, if you can’t see well enough, if you’re presented with a lamp, a light switch, a pull chord- something- you never actually turn the lights on. The lighting never improves. You can try with all your might, but even if you succeed in flipping the switch, etc, nothing changes.

This became, for me, the one true way to assess with any accuracy whether or not I was dreaming something up. It also explained the severe lack of good lighting in many of my dreams- how even on a bright and sunny day, everything could feel clouded over and the details blurry as if your sunglasses had schmutz all over the lenses.

But I digress. The real point of this entry is, quite honestly, to poke fun at myself for being so dream-obsessed- so much so, that I’ve devoted an entire data set in my Daytum account to the categorizing and plotting of these dreams, when I am able to remember them.

As you can see, I’m still trying to iron out the details. Categories aren’t as refined as I’d like, and for some reason as soon as I started actually charting them, my dreams became exponentially more difficult to remember. There’s also something really not working about the visual display properties of this particular chart style, but the pie chart, seemed no better.

No more blue ukulele dreams to speak of, but lastnight had something to do with being chased on a tour to a mansion that held the largest collection of records in my old neighborhood. I was, of course, searching for the Neil Diamond album that has “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon” on it and in competition with some rich billionaire searching for the same exact album. The race was on and I think I even found it, but then I woke up.

*It should also be noted that, in addition to never being able to change the lighting in my dreams, I am rarely able to dream in the place that I currently live. Basically, none of my dreams that deal with living spaces occur in any dwelling that I’ve had past our house on Robbins Dr, which we moved out of when I was 11. It’s spooky, and leads me to believe that perhaps I have some sort of psychological fixation with my life at that time, or the life we had in that house, or even that I knew all the trouble that was coming once we moved from that house. Either way, even to this day, after having moved once as a family and four times on my own, I have only dreamt maybe a handful of times of any of these other houses/apartments. Age doesn’t matter; I could be 24 and I would still somehow dream that I lived in the same house I did when I was 8.

Other things that tend to make repeat appearances would be the theft of my car- I even dreamt of it about a week before it actually happened (granted, it was the car I had owned previous to the White Beast, but still!), my own personal phobia (which I won’t divulge because it is embarrassing to no end), random distant acquaintances appearing in familiar ways (i.e. the lady that stands in line three people behind you for coffee is suddenly someone you know close and well; I guess I have a knack for photographically remembering faces and not knowing it. Creepy creepy!), Matt (but that’s just because of proximity and the fact that I love him and stuff, and he’s around all the time), and something that I haven’t dreamt about since I started keeping track: my brother. He’s appeared in a myriad of ways since his death, and at many different ages. My ability to interact with him has been anywhere from having real conversations (catching up in a “since you’ve been gone” way), to him not being able to hear or see me. Logically, you’d assume this is just a manifestation of my dealing with the whole situation. I’d like to be more spiritual and optimistic about the whole thing and see it as him communicating with me in some way, telling me he’s watching over me and that he’s fine now; he’s no longer in pain.

So, with that, you’ve not only caught a glimpse into several of my nerosis, but a deep dark corner of my psyche as well. That is, if you made it through this massive entry.